Computer-assisted self-training system for sports exercise using kinects

Self-training plays an important role in sports exercise. However, if not under the instruction of a coach, improper training postures can cause serious harm to muscles and ligaments of the body. Hence, the development of computer-assisted self-training systems for sports exercise is a recently emerging research topic. In this paper, we propose a Yoga self-training system, entitled YogaST, which aims at instructing the user/practitioner to perform the asana (Yoga posture) correctly and preventing injury caused by improper postures. Involving professional Yoga training knowledge, YogaST analyzes the practitioner's posture from both front and side views using two Kinects with perpendicular viewing directions and assists him/her in rectifying bad postures. The contour, skeleton, and feature axes of the human body are extracted as posture representation. Then, YogaST analyzes the practitioner's posture and presents visualized instruction for posture rectification so that the practitioner can easily understand how to adjust his/her posture.